— Kaden —

My phone rang. It was Jasmine. She never calls me during the day. Actually she pretty much never calls me unless something goes horribly wrong. Actually—scratch that—when things go wrong, she usually evades me like the plague. If she has anything to tell me, she’ll come to see me in person, which would give her a good reason to sneak a peek at whatever is going on.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she blurted out.

“What’s going on?” I straightened.

“I wanted to do something for Elaeya because of how things went last time, so I invited her at the pool with the girls, you know to get to know her.” She was trying for conversational, but she was talking too fast for this to be credible.

“Jass,” I cut her off. “What happened?” I felt my blood pressure peek.

“Someone got mean to her, and things escalated, and now Elaeya is going to face a challenge by combat with Mathias on the training ground.”

“WHAT?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want for this to go this way. Karla is usually nice, but she was drunk, and she was running her mouth off, and I lost control of the situation.”

I was barely listening to her when I hung up the line on her excuses as I rushed out of my office.

It didn’t take me long to ear the commotion ahead.

I could hear cheering and jeering in dissonance with one another. I went faster.

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!” I roared as I spotted the crowd.

Silence fell instantaneously, and people parted as I walked in.

Kids, just a bunch of stupid kids.

There were more than a few people who saw me rush out of the building and followed suit. My roar probably attracted more, and soon the people of the packhouse would swarm here.

I spotted Elaeya in the centre of the circle of onlookers. She wasn’t harmed and I let out a breath of relief.

I also spotted Ylva sitting on the fence on the other side of the circle.

“What the hell?” I snarled at her.

“She’s fine,” she said pointing her hand at Elaeya. “Her hair isn’t even ruffled.”

“This is not what I pay you for,” I growled.

“If you haven’t noticed,” she said pointing at a man on the ground with his face red with blood. “She just kicked his ass.”

I looked up at Elaeya, she looked clearly untroubled, as if she’d just taken a walk in a park.

“Why do I keep messing up?” I heard Jasmine whine in shame in the background. I’m going to have to deal with her eventually.

“Up,” I said to the guy on the ground.

He struggled to his feet, barely able to catch his breath, but did so.

Whatever expression I could see behind all the blood, was that of a terrified man.

“Now—,” I moved forward.

“No,” said Elaeya, raising her hand.

I stopped.

“This matter does not concern you,” she told me.

“What?”

“It is resolved.”

“Like hell it is,” I snarled.

Her features hardened.

I hesitated. “This should not have happened,” I growled.

“It had to be done,” she said.

“What? Why?” I asked confused.

The crowd around us grew in number as more people arrived.

“I had a point to make.”

Wait, did she mean she had something to do with this?

“Ylva?” I called.

“This is not for her to deal with,” Elaeya told me.

“This is very for her to deal with,” I interjected. “That’s why I pay her.”

“But not from this.”

“From any threats.”

“Why?” she asked me. “You want me to be your Luna, but you don’t think me capable?”

I froze. “That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s exactly what you meant,” she said. “You don’t trust me.”

Just like at lunch, I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

I wanted to say, ‘I trust you’ but I hesitated. And she caught it.

She sighed.

I looked around. One thing I know is not to wash your dirty underwear in public.

“Let’s talk about it at home,” I said softer this time, and walked to her.

She took a step back.

I froze halfway.

“No,” she said, looking at the people around us. “It has to be taken care of here, and now.”

I looked at them too. They were seeing us disagree, if they saw no resolution, they could imagine whatever they wanted, which could be unfavorable. Politic complicates everything, including relationships.

That’s one of the reasons why staying away from relationships has been easier on me so far. Everything in my personal life is looked at under a microscope. And she knew that already.

We had to sort this out here.

She sighed. “I wished I would not have to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Make a point.”

At those words, I saw Ylva tilt forward in anticipation. I tried to ignore her.

“A point about what?” I asked Elaeya.

“About where I stand.”

I tilted my head.

“Fight,” she told me.

My eyes widened.

“I’m not fighting you,” I said behind my teeth. I hoped it was low enough for the others not to understand.

“You have too,” she said.

“Why?” I pleaded.

“For you to understand.”

“Understand what?” I asked in muted desperation as she walked slowly toward me.

“Fight me,” she asked.

“No,”

She was close now. She raised her right hand to my chest, as her skin got in contact with my upper body, I felt something like a hundred pound pillow smack me in the thorax at fifty kilometers per hours.

I went skidding backwards. I managed to keep my balance, but I was now a few meters away from her.

My eyes widened in confusion.

The impact area was too large for a fist, nor had I seen any fist move. Actually, it felt like the impact area had been spread wider to mitigate damage.

She walked toward me.

My instinct told me to back away, but I was kind of curious about what kind of attack that was, plus backing away would make me look weak, which would not be the best thing to communicate with my pack about the dynamic between her and me.

She raised her hand to my chest again, and I braced for it.

I dug my feet in as another impact resonated against my torso, only this time with more force. And still, I could not see where this was coming from.

She said her grandmother had been a witch, was this a magical attack? I didn’t feel the usual goosebumps that comes with magic spells, but there are a lot of different kinds of magic out there, and I’ve encountered just a fraction of what truly exists. Plus, there was a lot of mentions in books of spirit wolves having a sort of magic of their own. Was this it? I was thinking furiously as she walked to me again.

Only this time, when she raised her hand to my chest, I let my instinct kick in and block it, only she counter-blocked this. So I blocked that too.

I aimed at grabbing her wrists to stop sequence of attacks and blocks, but she kept slithering away like an eel. I didn’t let her have a good frontal shot like she did before, but she managed to get an awkward one, slightly to the side, which had me repositioning. She tried to use this to get a good shot, but I barely evaded her in time.

She was good. Good enough to match some of my bests.

Her fighting style was different, graceful, her movements light yet calculated. She wasted no energy on flourishes. There were very little hesitations too. Which meant that she’d had to go through ridiculous amounts of training. No one gets this good, this young, without an insane number of hours of training for the movements to become nigh instinctual. Which made me think of how her posture is always impeccable, how her reactions, especially in public, always calculated, posed, controled. I guess discipline has been instilled in her from an extremely young age.

Thinking of how risky her living situation had been, it’s not a bad choice.

But then I started to wonder where this comes from. She’d spend most of her life only with her parents. Are they the one that taught her? If so, then they are probably not people to take lightly.

I tried to pin her against me. I managed to swing her back to my chest and wrap my hands over hers, but again, she nimbly, slipped out of my grip. Both of us were not fighting with everything we had. I knew she didn’t want to hurt me anymore that I wanted to hurt her, but this was building in intensity.

I couldn’t deny that there wasn’t a part of me that didn’t enjoy fighting for it. And I saw it in her eyes too. Her breathing accelerated, and not out of exhaustion. There was something animalistic in battles, like in sex, that drove my wolf wild.

There was a part of me that wanted nothing else but to pin her to the ground until she’d stop squirming, bite her neck until pliant and take her from behind, in front of everyone, just to show who’s in control. And the more she fought back, the more my instinct went wild.

I saw it too, the moment she realised what was really going through my mind. Her eyes darkened and she nearly faltered. Which made me smile wolfishly.

Our brawl was more intricate now, the movements wider, more violent, desperate.

I was testing her, her range, the strength of her attacks, but I never let her get another one of her invisible punches out.

She did pretty well, surprisingly well even. There was a little bit of pride in my grin.

And she realised what I was doing, nearly from the beginning—testing her. There was a part of her that really wanted to knock that grin off my face, and I enjoyed every second of this. The more she tried, the better it was.

She had a lot to prove, to me, to my people.

It also meant she was ready to take this on. She wanted to show that she can handle this. That she’s worth it. Today, she was telling my pack, she was their Luna.

It meant a lot more than a job, or a brawl on training ground.

No matter how I enjoyed our little squabble, we couldn’t keep doing this eternally. As I thought she’d had time enough to show she could hold her own even to me,I moved faster than I ever did since we started this and made a grab for her wrist and pulled her closer.

I saw her eyes widened, and something else too.

I’m not sure what it was but she was ready to fight harder. She might even pull something up like her first attack. Logically it would be something different, something I wouldn’t see coming, magic maybe.

So I tripped her hard with my leg to stop her before she could do anything.

She fell.

I held her so she wouldn’t slam too hard on the ground, and we landed down, one of my hands behind her head, my body pinning her in place.

Her eyes were huge, her chest rising and falling rapidly with every breath she took. The tension between us, reaching a peak. And I kissed her.

There was no restraint, no care, no delicacy.

She clawed at me, but not to push me away, but pulling me in closer.

Things got heated fast.

“Okay, there’s nothing more to see,” I heard Jayson say to the crowd, and it snapped us out of it.

Her eyes were dilated with lust, her lips swollen by that kiss, and I wanted nothing more than to resume what we were doing.

I got up fast, grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet quicker than she could have done herself. Nearly flying up to the vertical. I kept my hold on her hand and made course for my place.

I didn’t give the crowd a second thought.

The moment the door slammed behind us, I pushed her against the wall, her feet off the ground so that we would be at eye level. She twined her legs and arms around me, and we kissed.

There was no romance in that kiss, nothing but raw desire, and for a moment I thought I might be too rough and hurt her, but she never faltered.

I looked into her eyes, searching for a sign, something that would tell me if it was going too far, or too fast, or simply telling me to press forward even further.

At this distance, I could see every furrow, every channel in her eyes. The colours blending delicately like a flower in bloom. The hues were soft, her irises wide. I’ve never been the type to gawk at art pieces, but this was probably the best artwork I’ve ever seen, her laboured breath the soundtrack of her desire for me. There is nothing more satisfactory than to have such an effect on a beautiful woman.

I don’t know how long I spent looking in those eyes, but it’s only when she started to blink rapidly that I realised I’d been frozen in place.

This was not normal.

I recoiled, and took a few steps back.

She fell back on her feet, confused at my reaction.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she asked perplexed.

“I—,” I hesitated. “I looked in your eyes and it’s like I went offline, and I’m not sure what happened next.”

She took a sharp breath in understanding. “You got lost.”

“In your eyes?” I went from confusion to understanding as my mind reeled at maximum speed.

There are a lot of preternatural things out there. Things with all sorts of abilities. One of the first things I’ve been told about gods is to never look in their eyes, as some of them can pull you in. I know some sidhes can do that too. I don’t think I’ve even encountered anything trying this trick on me though.

“Why?” accusations clear in my voice.

She blinked a few times. “I didn’t do anything, you just went in there.”

I blinked. “You mean you can’t control this?”

“I could push forward if I wanted to, but you went in there on your own, it’s a lot harder to control that. And—,” She blushed. “I wasn’t very guarded against you.”

“Erm,” I took another step back. I’m not sure I’m fond of the idea of having my mind messed up with.

“I could teach you,” she told me.

“About what?”

“How to control this. Get in or out at will. How not to get lost on your way.”

“So that I wouldn’t get involuntarily hypnotized?”

“Or voluntarily.”

“Against you?”

“Anything that can do that.”

Well, that’s an interesting thought.

“So it couldn’t work?” I asked her.

“Nothing is impossible, but let’s just say you would have a powerful line of defence and would be even able to use this to your advantage.”

“How?”

“Eyes can be doorways. Doorways can go both ways. If you know what you are doing, anyone who opens that door could be in for a surprise.”

I smiled. “So no one is able to hypnotize you?”

“Let’s just say it is pretty hard to do.” She smiled mischievously back at me.

“Okay.” I grinned. “I’m in.”